Other people would probably say: I wasn't myself. But Granny Weatherwax didn't have anyone else to be.
The two witches hurried on through the gale.
From the shelter of a thorn thicket, the unicorn watched them go.
Diamanda Tockley did indeed wear a floppy black velvet hat. It had a veil, too.
Perdita Nitt, who had once been merely Agnes Nitt before she got witchcraft, wore a black hat with a veil too, because Diamanda did. Both of them were seventeen. And she wished she was naturally skinny, like Diamanda, but if you can't be skinny you can at least look unhealthy. So she wore so much thick white make-up in order to conceal her naturally rosy complexion that if she turned around suddenly her face would probably end up on the back of her head.
They'd done the Raising of the Cone of Power, and some candle magic, and some scrying. Now Diamanda was showing them how to do the cards.
She said they contained the distilled wisdom of the Ancients. Perdita had found herself treacherously wondering who these Ancients were - they clearly weren't the same as old people, who were stupid, Diamanda said, but she wasn't quite clear why they were wiser than, say, modem people.
Also, she didn't understand what the Feminine Principle was. And she wasn't too clear about this Inner Self business. She was coming to suspect that she didn't have one.
And she wished she could do her eyes like Diamanda did.
And she wished she could wear heels like Diamanda did.
Amanita DeVice had told her that Diamanda slept in a real coffin.
She wished she had the nerve to have a dagger-and-skull tattoo on her arm like Amanita did, even if it was only in ordinary ink and she had to wash it off every night in case her mother saw it.
A tiny, nasty voice from Perdita's inner self suggested that Amanita wasn't a good choice of name.
Or Perdita, for that matter.
And it said that maybe Perdita shouldn't meddle with things she didn't understand.
The trouble was, she knew, that this meant nearly everything.
She wished she could wear black lace like Diamanda did.
Diamanda got results.
Perdita wouldn't have believed it. She'd always known about witches, of course. They were old women who dressed like crows, except for Magrat Garlick, who was frankly mental and always looked as if she was going to burst into tears. Perdita remembered Magrat bringing a guitar to a Hogswatchnight party once and singing wobbly folk songs with her eyes shut in a way that suggested that she really believed in them. She hadn't been able to play, but this was all right because she couldn't sing, either. People had applauded because, well, what else could you do?
oor was open.
“Cooee?”
Nanny glanced into the scullery, and then thumped up the small narrow staircase.
Granny Weatherwax was stretched rigid on her bed. Her face was grey, her skin was cold.
People had discovered her like this before, and it always caused embarrassment. So now she reassured visitors but tempted fate by always holding, in her rigid hands, a small handwritten sign which read:
I ATE'NT DEAD.
The window was propped open with a piece of wood.
“Ah,” said Nanny, far more for her own benefit than for anyone else's, “I sees you're out. I'll, I'll, I'll just put the kettle on, shall I, and wait 'til you comes back?”
Esme's skill at Borrowing unnerved her. It was all very well entering the minds of animals and such, but too many witches had never come back. For several years Nanny had put out lumps of fat and bacon rind for a bluetit that she was sure was old Granny Postalute, who'd gone out Borrowing one day and never came back. Insofar as a witch could consider things uncanny. Nanny Ogg considered it uncanny.
She went back down to the scullery and lowered a bucket down the well, remembering to fish the newts out this time before she boiled the kettle.
Then she watched the garden.